Best First Hours

Ian's reviews and writings

In all my years, I’ve never been much of a racing game fan. Quite
honestly, the idea of doing the same thing over and over feels tedious
to me. While some games, like Need for Speed Underground and Gran
Turismo have offered vehicle customization to try and keep things
fresh, they still seem to fall into a slump of painful repetition.

But
Black Rock Studios, the creators of Pure, have strived to come up to a
solution to this plague, and that is massive destruction and a game
premise unique from any other racing game I’ve ever laid my eyes on.
This solution is called Split/Second.

The premise of the game is
that you’re a stunt driver in a reality television series called
Split/Second, that has these stunt drivers racing against each other in
cities manufactured by the television show. While stunts, in
themselves, are not entirely new, the massive chaos is extremely
refreshing.

We’ve all played Mario Kart, and we’ve shot koopa
shells at our enemies and laughed as they were rendered motionless
while we passed them into first place, and it’s relatively satisfying
to a point, but this is different.

But where Mario Kart is set
to stun, Split/Second is set to kill. From gas station explosions and
helicopters dropping explosive barrels to air planes crashing on the
raceway, this game delivers a completely original adrenaline rush that
delivers over and over again.

You’re in control of these beautiful
disasters with power plays, which are your weapons in this dog-eat-dog
racing world. The way to activate them is to accumulate energy. You can
accomplish this by drifting around corners, drafting behind your
opponents, and jumping with your vehicle. You also receive a bonus
amount of energy by passing opponents while drifting, jumping past
opponents and dodging power plays set off in your path.

I'd like to apologize for being so wordy this week at the First Hour, but the writers here love to write! I recently asked Ian to tell me about his gaming history, thinking I'd get a couple line reponse about how his parents bought him a Game Boy or something, but along comes a serious epic that will probably seem very familiar to many of us reading along.

If you've got your own story you'd like to tell, reply in the comments or send me an email, I'd love to host it here!

Ogre
Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber is a mixed game, and has had mixed
reviews. Some hold it as the holy grail of RPG/Strategy gaming, while
others find it about as entertaining as a box of rocks.

I’m
of the former. When I saw this game in Nintendo Power, and read about
it, it was all new to me. I never played its SNES predecessor. But it
looked so awesome. Being an RPG fan, and desperately wanting a reason
to play my Nintendo 64 other than to play Super Smash Bros. or Star
Fox. The game Quest 64 left a terrible taste in my mouth and made me
desperately want a Playstation for some good RPG games.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is a
game I knew very little about. When I was about eight years old, a few of my friends said it was "the destroyer of worlds." Not just difficult, but impossible.
None of my friends could progress very far, and as an eight year old,
I wanted to prove to them that I was superior. Unfortunately,
none of them would lend it to me, and I never really had the money to
buy it and every time I went to the video store to rent it, it was always
out. I don't know if it was just that popular, or if they lost it. I'm
guessing the latter.

Now, I understand that it was
made in 1991 by Capcom. It’s been ported to a bunch of different gaming
platforms including the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation
2, Xbox, PlayStation Portable and Virtual Console on the Wii.

It is the sequel to Ghosts 'n
Goblins and Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and also loosely related to Demon's Crest. I've played games like Contra
and got pretty far before hitting a mark that was impassable for me,
even at the wee ages of nine. So I figured… how hard can this game
be? Here's the first hour of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts.